Surgeon with a mission:
to make the evolution myth extinct
Philip Bell and Tim Matthews interview Vij Sodera
Dr Vij Sodera is the author of the book, One Small Speck to Man,1 the result of fourteen years
of research. Impressed with this, Philip Bell wrote a teaching review article for
the Journal of Creation.2
More recently, Philip and Tim met Dr Sodera at his home on England’s south
coast where, together with his wife Margaret (a qualified nurse), he runs a private
Minor Surgery clinic.
Vij is holding a 12-week-old spider monkey fetus which was stillborn. Evolution
theory states that this monkey is our distant cousin and that we have a common ancestry
with sea-squirts. In contrast, in his book, Vij shows that the fossil and biological
evidence confirms that humans have always been humans and that we are not modified
apes.
Vij Sodera was fascinated by biology from a young age. Born in India, he has lived
in Britain since the age of four and has always enjoyed painting and drawing animals—a
few of these are illustrations in his recent book.3
He first encountered evolutionary teaching in school and again during his human
anatomy studies at medical school, but it made little scientific sense to him. Only
later did Vij begin to address the issues that had always interested him.
‘The more stones I overturned in the biological realm, the more complicated
I saw things to be. An organism, when you look at it under the microscope, is so
horrendously complicated. I found more and more evidence that living organisms could
not have arisen by chance—there was design in everything I looked at.
‘If you look at bird anatomy in detail, you find that there are data which
show categorically that dinosaurs could not have evolved into birds. Recently,
a fossilized bipedal dinosaur (Scipionyx) was re-analyzed under different
frequencies of ultraviolet light so that various internal organs stood out—the
colon, the liver, the trachea and the rectum. Since a bird has air sacs in its abdomen
and its pectoral area,4
the organs in those areas are pushed forwards rather than sitting against the
spine. However, the form of Scipionyx was typically
reptilian—it had no air sacs and its internal organs were positioned adjacent
to the spine. A careful look at the unique bird lung shows
that a step-wise change from reptilian to bird lung is impossible.5 And the idea that via modifications
of a few frayed scales, a dinosaur could take to the air is total nonsense. That
fits in with Genesis where God made animals of different and separate kinds. Dinosaurs,
whether they were small and bipedal or like the huge Brachiosaurus, were
totally different animals from birds and other reptiles.’
Our faith is built on a secure foundation of the Bible’s revelation, evidence
and reasoning
Because he wanted to produce a book that dealt purely with the scientific evidence,
Vij’s latest book does not contain overt references to the Bible. We asked
him how he personally understood
Genesis 1–11. ‘Where do we come from?
The Bible says that God spoke everything into existence, and that makes perfect
sense. Creation means there must be a Creator, and the Creator of the Bible wants
to have a relationship with us and wants to be known to us. God says in His Word
that He created the land animals and human beings on the sixth day. This is not
blind faith because it fits in with what we observe scientifically. Our faith is
built on a secure foundation of the Bible’s revelation, evidence and reasoning.
Romans 1:20
says that you see the nature of God in His creation. It also says that ‘ever
since the creation … His deity has been perceived’. Thus, human intellect
had to be there right from the beginning.’
Here Dr Sodera is about to dissect a 30-year-old emu that died of natural causes.
The lung anatomy of an emu is exactly the same as that of flying birds. The unique
structure of the bird lung (which is completely different from amphibians, reptiles
and mammals) shows that birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs.
Coming from a Hindu background, Vij’s early exposure to Christianity was through
attending a church school. Much later, he attended church with his wife and started
asking new questions. He says God spoke to Him through Luke chapter 3 one night:
‘Luke actually starts by defining the time-frame for when these events [surrounding
Jesus’ life] were taking place. He categorically defines prominent people
alive at that time (Tiberius, Pilate, etc.). Luke wasn’t describing fictional
events but historical reality.’ Vij was particularly struck by the fact that
Jesus was baptized in obedience to God’s plan: ‘Jesus Himself, God as
Man, didn’t ask the question, “Why be baptized?” God the Father—the
Creator—makes the rules and when you follow the rules, everything else in
the whole universe falls into place. He says, if you trust in Jesus and repent of
your sins, you will have eternal life.’
But what would Vij say to those who might retort that this is about faith, not science?
‘I would say that it is both logical and scientific to posit the
hypothesis that God created the universe. In order to nullify that hypothesis, a
scientist would then have to provide data or work out a thought experiment in order
to criticize that thesis and pull it down. If, as we can show, we could not have
evolved, then the scientist has to look to another cause to answer, “Well,
where do we come from?”
‘There is no logical or scientific explanation other than a Cause which is
outside the universe as we know it.6
Therefore it’s entirely logical and scientific to say that God created us.
Then you have to define who God is, and the only valid candidate for the Creator
is found in the Bible.’
Vij’s book, ‘One Small Speck to Man’, is subtitled ‘the
evolution myth’ implying that evolution is a ‘just-so’
story and that evolutionists believe something that they cannot prove—and
more importantly, something that is not supported by the evidence. To Vij, this
is a crucial point:
Dr Sodera with his wife Margaret and their two daughters, Melanie and Lisa.
‘I wanted to produce a book that was full of scientific, logical arguments
coupled with plenty of images to challenge the reader. True scientists should look
at all the evidence—even the evidence they don’t like—and
accept what it points to. Of course, if people choose to willfully reject God, then
it doesn’t matter how much they know—there will be a fatal void in their
thinking.
‘If you look at Cytochrome C for instance, an enzyme vital to all life forms,
it has 38 amino acids in its sequence which are invariant, so those 38 amino acids
must be essential for its function. Therefore, Cytochrome C cannot have
arisen step-by-step.’7
We wondered how, as a Christian surgeon, he reacted to the common anti-Creator challenge:
If the body is so marvellously designed, why are there many mistakes and things
that go wrong?8
‘God made everything perfect in the first place, but as a result
of the Fall, disease processes have developed in our bodies and in animal bodies.
As a result of the disobedience of man, the whole universe was subject to a curse
and decay, resulting in mutations and molecular derangements of all living things,
as we see in a lot of human diseases.’
Yet Vij is vexed by the atheist professors who deny obvious design. He commented
on Steve Jones, who recently went into a diatribe on BBC Radio (UK) about the allegedly
inefficient design of the human eye, saying that its designer would be a ‘pretty
rotten’ one9 and mentioned
Richard Dawkins who has claimed that it would ‘take only about 10 minutes
to exhaust the case for ID.’10
Vij said: ‘Regarding men who reject God, Romans 1:22 declares: “Professing themselves to be
wise, they became fools.” The debate on origins is not about evolution versus
religion but about good science versus bad science.’11
We found the discussion both stimulating and encouraging. Here was a man who recognized
that ‘the whole of science starts—and finishes—with a bias’
and was passionate about bringing all the evidence of science and medicine
to light, weighing it sensibly and honestly. He had concluded from science, as well
as Scripture, that human beings are unique among all life forms on the Earth. We
found Dr Sodera to be a man who passionately tackles both his surgery and his science—along
with all his other interests—with heart and mind in gear. Likewise
with his Christian faith: ‘The Bible says in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, let us reason together.”
The God of the Bible doesn’t want us to be ignorant or dim-witted. God wants
us to know Him from a position of knowledge, intelligence and wisdom. Human opinions
are meaningless unless there is some absolute upon which to gauge the truth of the
matter. God, in Ecclesiastes 12:13, says, “Fear God and keep His commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.” Man’s position is to have a relationship
with the God who is our loving Father, and to do things as He—our Creator—has
designed them to be done.’
Related resources
References and notes
- Sodera, V., One Small Speck to Man: the evolution myth,
Vij Sodera Publications, West Sussex, UK, 2003. Return to Text.
- Bell, P., Debunking the molecules-to-man myth, Journal
of Creation 19(3):45–50, 2005. Return
to Text.
- See ref. 1, pages 64–65, 234–235, 416–417.
Return to Text.
- This is commonly called the shoulder girdle.
Return to Text.
- Blown away by design, Michael
Denton and birds’ lungs, Creation 21(4):14–15,
1999; <www.creation.com/birdlung>. Return to Text.
- Sarfati, J., If God created the
universe, then who created God? Journal of Creation 12(1):20–22,
1998; <www.creation.com/whomadegod>. Return to Text.
- Dr Sodera adds: ‘If Cytochrome C has been around for
3.5 billion years, then by now all the non-essential amino acids would have sustained
substitutions in all organisms. Essentially, right at the outset, Cytochrome C would
have to have had the 38 amino acids in the right places, properly separated along
the protein chain, in order to make the specific shape of its active site.’
The active site is the part of the enzyme that is crucial to its function.
Return to Text.
- See also chapter 6 of The Answers Book, Batten, D.
et al., Creation Ministries International, Brisbane, Australia, pp. 91–100,
1999. Return to Text.
- This program was on BBC Radio 2, United Kingdom, 4 April 2006.
Return to Text.
- Since 1995, Professor Dawkins has held the Simonyi Chair
in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, but uses his influence
to foist his own brand of atheism onto the readers of his books.
Return to Text.
- Dr Sodera added that in his opinion, ‘Evolution theory
is wholly bad science. And for those who look up to Darwin as some sort of hero,
his complete failure to address properly the myriad flaws in his ideas (which even
in his time could have been easily identified) makes him, at best, a very poor scientist.
In summary, anyone who has no doubt that chimpanzees are our distant cousins, or
that fishes and worms share a common ancestry with humans, either has not studied
the wealth of evidence to the contrary … or is living in a state of denial.’
Return to Text.
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